Vice President Biden ‘comfortable’ with gay marriage

Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday said he doesn’t have a problem with gay marriage, potentially signaling a shift in the White House’s position.

In an ABC interview, Biden said: “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.”

Biden added that he does not know if the Obama administration will offer public support for gay marriage. “The president sets the policy,” he said Sunday on Meet the Press.

In recent months the White House has sought to curry more favor with gays ahead of the 2012 presidential election. President Obama has said in the past that he does not support gay marriage, but some of his more recent comments indicate that his publicly stated views are shifting.

In another move last year, the Obama administration declined to continue to defend the “Defense of Marriage” act, which was signed in 1996 by another Democrat, President Bill Clinton.

Obama said during the 2008 campaign that he would seek to repeal the act, but there is little chance of that happening in a sharply divided Congress. House Republicans, for their part, have taken over legal defense of DOMA in court.